Train to Toccoa Georgia

Photos

It seems like it has been a long time, but I just haven't posted mainly because I didn't get photos from Clay, or any good photos in a timely manner. But, we went to Ayden, NC for the Collard Festival, we went to the Raleigh Greek Fest, the 1st Annual Oakwood-Mordecai Oktoberfest, the Cooke Street Carnival and we went to the NC State Fair. So, it isn't like we've just been sitting at home. In fact, by traveling this weekend we missed the annual Oakwood Pig Pickin' and the Oakwood Confederate Cemetery Lantern Walk.

Anyway, I saw this trip advertised in October 2011 issue of Our State Magazine. This subscription is our annual Christmas gift from Clay's brother Warner and his wife, Vivian. Thanks W & V! The ad was from Salisbury, NC and the NC Transportation Museum. Now we have done a long weekend trip here before and spent a day at the museum (which is enormous and amazing) and a historic homes tour along with other historic sites nearby while spending our nights at The Rowan Oak B&B and having a fancy dinner at La Cava (excellent, still remember the chocolate souffle) and more than a couple of meals of Western NC-style BBQ. So, we were looking for something completely different if we were going back again somewhere and we found it.

The one day round trip train trip was $145pp. We were in Coach Class. Evidently, First Class and Dome Class were about double our fare and in addition to 2 meals, they got to ride in collectible cars. We were in standard Amtrak coach cars. They were nice enough, but Clay and I both remembered having foot rests in Amtrak coach last time we traveled that way. Not anymore apparently. Anyway, by the time I saw the ad and went to the website, all ticket classes except the cheapest were all sold out. People in the cheap seats could still go to the commissary car and buy sandwiches, snacks and beverages. We could also have prereserved a box lunch w/beverage delivered to our seat (we didn't, but noted that they included a souvenir insulated lunch bag which was a nice touch). Also, you could carry on small coolers of food and drinks (we didn't, but did have a couple of sodas, water and some snacks in a backpack).

It seems that Autumn Train Excursions are an annual event of the NC Transportation Museum. I'm not sure why this had never come up on our radar before. On Saturday, October 29, they went north to Roanoke, VA. Now this is another place we had previously done a weekend trip, so that held no appeal. Also, it turned out they had snow, rain, freezing temps up there that day, so just as well! On Sunday, October 30, they went south to Toccoa, GA. We chose that one since it went somewhere we'd never been. In addition to the 2nd or 3rd tallest waterfall in the USA, they were having a street fair, Harvest Festival. We would only have about 3 hours off the train there, so that sounded about right.

Since we had done the deluxe version of Salisbury before, this time we did the budget, freeway exits version. Very different! There were a lot of people in town this weekend, to judge by the shortage of available hotel rooms! They claimed there were about 1000 people on our over 1/2 mile long train on Sunday, so that may have accounted for it. In any event, we wound up at the Days Inn at I-85 exit 76 in Salisbury, NC. It was a great deal at $103.87 total for 2 nights with Clay's AARP discount. It was clean, convenient and very cheap! It was fine, but not really nice. We enjoyed the free HBO and free Internet, not so much the free breakfast. We certainly got our money's worth though given that all the other freeway exit motels looked about the same and they were twice the price.

So, to be sure that there would be no problems, we drove over on Saturday to pick up our tickets. You could buy your tickets online, but then you had to print out a confirmation letter and exchange it Friday, Saturday or Sunday during certain times in certain places for your actual tickets to ride. We got there in the early afternoon and went straight to the museum to get our tickets in Spencer, NC. Then we drove straight over to our motel and checked in. After checking out our room and unpacking, we went out to the nearby shopping center and had a light lunch at East Coast Wings. Then we went back to the room and watched Gulliver's Travels on HBO. We didn't see it at the theater when it was out, because it was only shown in 3-D at our local theater and that gives me a headache! I always enjoy Jack Black. After that and Clay's nap, we went back out for dinner. We wound up at Capriano's in the same shopping center. It was an interesting mix of Greek and Italian food. The prices were surprisingly low for the amount of food. We enjoyed it and filled up. Back at the hotel, we went to the vending machine by the ice machine and had microwave popcorn for a $1. Then back to the room and we watched Love & Other Drugs. We had seen it before and I still found it just as disturbing, if not more so. On Thursday, my tremor expanded its territory from just my right leg to my right hand. One day, I will have to get further medical opinions on this thing since I cannot find any information about resting benign essential tremors being unilateral. But, that is a whole other subject and we are not going there today. Just sayin', it's why I can't like Love & Other Drugs. Otherwise, it is pretty enjoyable entertainment. Then to sleep. We had to get up early, early for the main event. All aboard was scheduled for 6am on Sunday!

Complimentary breakfast at the Days Inn starts at 6am and we needing to be boarding then, so we got up even earlier so we could get breakfast at the nearby IHOP. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. The help was cleaning up from what was evidently a costumed rush of young people from about 4am to 5am, so we just missed them, but we got caught in the aftermath cleanup. No real complaints, it was as expected and we were on our way to Spencer.

The train was about 1/2 mile long. Our assigned train car on our tickets was 5. We had to walk about a mile from where we parked our car to where we boarded the train, then we had to walk through 5 train cars to get to ours. We were 5 cars back from the engines. We counted 4 engines! They explained to us that yesterday in Roanoke, they wyed the train to turn it around for the return trip. In Toccoa, they can't do that. So, they moved the locomotives from the front to the back and all the seats that could be and were occupied had to be flipped so we would be facing front again. So, going down in the AM we were the 5th car from the front. Coming back in the PM, we were the 5th car from the back. Also, the seats didn't line up as nicely after being flipped. The windows didn't line up as well, and it seemed the leg room was reduced. At least we didn't have to ride back facing backwards!

Everyone got loaded between 6 and 7am and we were off right at 7am on the nose. It was still dark for the first hour or so and the tracks were very rough to start out, so we couldn't go very fast. It made me feel bad. I was on 2 meclizine and seabands and MotionEaze. Eventually, the track improved, our speed increased and the sun shone and all was better. I made the trek to the souvenir and commisary cars, from car 5 to cars 11-12. I bought Clay a pack of nabs per his request. I had preordered his souvenir T-shirt with the tickets and we had picked it up yesterday at the Gift Shop with the tickets. I should note that it looked like they still had plenty of them available onboard. We had only one short stop in each direction. That was Spartanburg, SC to pick up and drop off passengers.


Clay spent most of the trip watching his 6-hour BBC Pride & Prejudice video on this tablet, or on the Amtrak complimentary Internet or sleeping. He sat by the window so he could take pictures. I will post some of them now.

We arrived in Toccoa, GA about noon. We went directly to the line for shuttle buses to the falls. That was a nice touch, providing complimentary round trip buses. It was crowded but scenic and we got t-shirts as we passed through the Toccoa Falls College Bookstore to reach the trail to and from the falls. Then, it was back to downtown Toccoa for the Harvest Festival. It was nice. It was bigger than Ayden's Collard Festival I think, but with fewer rides. We ate some good street food. Clay had ribs and I had a Creole Roast Beef sandwich on onion roll. We shared a corn and cheese patty thing at a crepe stand. Clay bought a big bag of kettle corn. How have we been missing this? I know we see this alot at fairs and festivals but we have never had any before. Just as well, I went at it like a crackhead! I loved it! Anyway, we walked the whole thing and contributed to Toccoa's economy and we were very welcomed there. They have a population of about 5000 and we added 1000 for 3 hours. They welcomed us, treated us great and waved us off when it was time to go. Couldn't have been nicer. Couldn't have been a more beautiful day. I'll end with photos from Toccoa, GA.

We got back to Spencer on schedule at 8pm. It felt much later. We wound up further away from the car than this morning and we were next to last off the train! We went straight back to the hotel and to sleep. We were very happy that we decided for Clay to take Monday off work and spend the night here and wait to drive home in the morning. We slept in on Monday but still made it to the Days Inns' complimentary breakfast before it ended. We needn't have bothered. It was crowded and not well done. Though they did have 2 self-service waffle irons! Anyway, all the rest was a non event and we got home just before it started raining again! We had a great weekend.

In a very strange postscript, Toccoa was in the news. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Photos